Tim Appelo

Tim Appelo was a film critic for The Nation, The Oregonian, Seattle Times, Seattle Weekly, KCTS and KING-FM.

At EW, he lost a snowball fight to Benicio del Toro, Michael Madsen and John Cusack, who flying-tackled him in a 100-year storm; revealed Brandon Lee’s cause of death, Diane Keaton’s opinion of Annie Hall (“She’s stupid”), and Dr. Evil’s secret identity (he’s a Lorne Michaels impression); survived clubhopping with Julia Phillips the night she knocked out Wes Anderson with an Ecstasy-microwaved joint at Babylon on his first night in Hollywood, earning him a stern lecture from his mom.

He kept up with Uma Thurman and Tim Curry drinking wine at their homes, but couldn’t keep up with Kathleen Turner; kept down-on-his-luck Travolta waiting for hours outside Bruce Willis’s trailer because Bruce would not shut up about Hudson Hawk; and survived a kiss on the cheek from Goldie Hawn, Courtney Love's phone calls, Stockard Channing's stab at ending my journalism career, and a mock (but genuinely angry) strangulation by Alan Rudolph right after an exec said, “Alan, you make $8 million look like $30 million! So here’s $7 million.”

Caricature of Tim Appelo, drawn for the cover of the New York Press by Danny Hellman in 1992